It’s not too often that our attention turns to smartphones manufactured by Alcatel; back in the fall, the company’s One Touch 995 caught our eye as being a candidate for an early Ice Cream Sandwich-based handset. We haven’t heard much from Alcatel since then, but today news arrives of the company’s model OT986, which from the sound of things could end up as a nice budget-priced alternative to the Galaxy Nexus.

While it’s not a perfect Nexus copy, the OT986 does hit a lot of the same notes with its hardware configuration. Like the Nexus, it’s powered by a dual-core TI OMAP 4460, though at a slightly faster 1.5GHz. The display’s a little smaller at 4.5 inches, and is an IPS component, but with the same 720p resolution. There’s a five-megapixel main camera, and the OT986’s front-facer is a bit higher-res than Samsung’s at two megapixels. The phone is designed with Ice Cream Sandwich in mind from the get-go, forgoing the inclusion of capacitive Android buttons. The one place it falls noticeably short of the Nexus mark is with storage, having only 8GB on-board.

The OT986 will be available in China as the TCL S900, where there will also be a slightly lower-spec version of the phone, with a 1.2GHz processor and just 4GB of flash. One of those two versions should end up costing about $315 off-contract, but it’s not yet clear which we’re talking about. With the Galaxy Nexus now down to $399, we’re hoping that’s the 1.5GHz model, because an upper-300s price for the OT986 could be a hard sell.